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The secrecy behind quotas is madness

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The secrecy behind quotas is madness

Why has Noel Wicks been driven to compile The Wicks Wall of Shame? It’s down to constant time-wasting supply problems, of course...

In the words of the famous cartoon character Popeye, ‘That’s all I can stands, cuz I can’t stands n’more!’ This month I must say that I have had my fill of dealing with manufacturers’ nonsense customer care lines.

I know I’m preaching to the converted here, but one day last week I was pushed over my tolerance threshold by back-to-back phone calls. So it is time to bust open a can of spinach, flex my guns and let rip with my latest idea: The Wicks Wall of Shame.

I won’t name names in print, but I suspect that you may have had similar experiences with these companies. The winner by a country mile frustrated me so much that I was forced to go outside and kick the (actual) bin. It’s the classic story of trying to get transplant medication for a regular patient, but our staff at this particular branch tell me they have routine problems.

It’s the start of the month and on checking the PMR I can see that none has been ordered so far. So why are my wholesalers passing me to the manufacturer’s customer care line?

Cue the polite gentleman who listens to my request for further supplies. My first question is of course to ask what the pharmacy’s quota level is so I can compare it to the computer’s list of patients regularly on the drug. ‘I can’t tell you your quota,’ says the polite gentleman.

Sorry – run that by me again? Neither he, nor anyone there, nor my wholesaler can tell me what my quota is

Let me revise that: no one is prepared to tell me what my quota is. I already know this is zero, considering that this is the first time we have tried to order this month and they have refused to send any.

Having been brought to boiling point, I agree to fax an anonymous prescription, but point out that this has already been done several times previously. Are there not ABPI guidelines to the industry regarding not faxing prescriptions once an established pattern has been shown I ask? At this point the gentleman became slightly less comfortable and said something about this ‘potentially’ being the case. I enquired as to how many more times I should advise staff at this branch to fax before they could stop.

I received a vague reply along the line of ‘at least several’ times and something about needing to know ‘it wasn’t just people walking in off the street’. Well I should jolly well hope they do walk in, because anyone flying, canoeing or roller-skating in is contravening our health and safety rules. This company is certainly in top place for the most utterly useless customer care (or lack of).

They aren’t the only ones on The Wicks Wall of Shame. A phone call to our wholesaler to find out what’s happening with a fragrance-free shower gel should have been so simple. Confusingly, I was told that the manufacturer doesn’t like to disclose the dates that they expect stock to be back in supply. Instead they prefer to deal direct with individual customers.

Then what followed was a six-minute call to the customer care line, five and half minutes of which was being passed around and listening twice to long messages about how my data might be stored or used outside of the country. All to be told a date, which I could have got from my wholesaler in a previous conversation five minutes shorter in length. So up on the wall you go, too.

I’ll keep you updated on The Wall but in the meantime, if you pass a pharmacy in Scotland with a badly damaged bin outside, you will know
it’s one of mine!

Noel Wicks is an independent pharmacist

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